Dirt will do nicely!

Tonight I was reading my Word and it flopped open to Ezekiel 37 in which Ezekiel had a vision of a valley full of bones. God told him to prophesy to the bones, "Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you and you will come to life." (Ezekiel 37:4)

Then the bones were put together; skin and hair were slapped on and they looked like people but they were not alive. Then God told Ezekiel to prophesy again and (vs. 10) "breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet - a vast army."

God takes an impossible situation, the most desperate dead situation and makes life from it.

I had been thinking around New Year's how far I had come in the last 10 years. I had just turned 18 in 1995. I was trying to follow the procession of my life from who I was then to who God has transformed me into and they do not fit. I do not understand how God takes dirt and changes it into a person by adding breath. I have no idea how he took who I was (very dirty), breathes on it and changes it into something completely different. My transformation is an actual miracle and I do not mean that in a shallow way. There is no logic, no progression of events that ever showed what was happening. God just "did it".

Breathe into these that were slain- that they may live! (vs 9)

In the same way I am reminded that when we look at a whole landscape filled with dead people, they aren't dead to God. They are raw material for him. He doesn't need but a speck of dirt to create life. He doesn't even need a willing speck of dirt.

I think of people I have written off or discounted as dead and beyond help in my life. I don't think there is anything that can ever melt their hard hearts or change their "liberated" minds. I know God can do anything, but I figure that is just too much. This story is about them. It is about my dad's family; his brothers, mother, sister in law, nieces and nephews. It is about people who look dead or maybe even look like people but don't have the breath of God and are not alive. It is a story about people who have been slain in the world and it is hope and it is power. It is God able to move with material that looks unusable to me.

One of the really cool things about this story of the valley of bones to me is that when God's breath fell upon these people WHO WERE DEAD, not only did they come alive, but they were a vast army. In some churches, the whole landscape is filled with dead people, but when God breathes on them, they become alive. They become a vast army for God. We are his warriors. Imagine what a church full of alive people could conquer. I will let you know....